We have been having a wonderful year so far. The past 2 weeks students have been acclimating or re-acclimating to the music room procedures and expectations. This week all the students are doing grade-level lessons surrounding steady beat and rhythm. In kindergarten we used play-doh as tortilla dough flour and kept a steady beat to the poem "Tortillitas" See if you children remember the motions and words to the rhyme!
"Tortillitas para mama. Tortillitas para papa. Las bonitas para Papa. Las quemaditas para mama"
(sorry for the lack of accents in the Spanish lyrics)
Students with their play-doh "tortillitas"
1st grade- 5th grade students played "Busted" a game where students pull a stick from a cannister. The stick may have a rhythm on it. If it does, they read the rhythm and keep the stick if it's done correctly. If the stick says "Busted!" the student loses their turn and all their sticks. Next week we will start reviewing melody.
We also met my special friends Nana, Mahalia, and Lil' Liza Jane. If your child mentions them, I wanted to show you one of them here. This is Nana who has been visiting Whittier for years. She talks about when she went to Whittier as a child, songs she learned when she was little and when she was a music teacher. Students (even our older ones) love singing along with her!
